Writer pens book about unpublished 'Da Vinci' sequel

NEWTOWN - David Shugarts has written a book about another man's book that does not yet exist in the published world.

"It's kind of audacious," Shugarts said from his Newtown home, but he thinks his book will sell when comes out later this month.
He's not writing about just any author, but about the next work by

Dan Brown
, the author of mega-hits like "The
Da Vinci
Code" and "Angels & Demons."
"They (fans) have read everything by Dan Brown," Shugarts said.
His own book, "Secrets of the Widow's Son: The Mysteries Surrounding the Sequel to The Da Vinci Code" (Sterling Publishing) is "what you read while you wait for (Brown's) next book," Shugarts said.
Shugarts, the president of a graphics arts and computer services company in Newtown, started reading "The Da Vinci Code" in 2003.
The tale, which combined secret societies, biblical mysteries, the occult and more, seemed interesting to Shugarts. But his aviation journalism background propelled his interest into something more.
In the 1980s, he created and edited

Aviation Safety magazine
, a Greenwich publication that covered air traffic accidents and safety issues.
"When you talk about aircraft, you have to be absolutely, totally accurate or the audience leaves," he said.
More than a decade later, while reading "Da Vinci Code," that background helped him spot some factual errors about planes in the book.
So he wrote Brown. He never received a response, but some friends asked him to look through the Da Vinci book for more errors. They then published "Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code," which includes some of Shugarts' work.
The casual reading turned into an ever-growing research project. Shugarts studied codes included in "The Da Vinci Code" and comments Brown made in interviews and then delved into myriad topics that could make up Brown's next book, which doesn't have a scheduled release date yet.
The result is a book filled with the mysteries and wonders of the country's founding fathers, treasures in Washington, D.C., hieroglyphics and Kabbalah.
In the end, he said, it became not just a book on Brown's book, but a look at mysteries that could enchant anyone.
Including himself.
"The idea is to have fun," Shugarts said. "At every twist and turn, I really was like a little boy with a video game. It was like picking up a gold nugget."